If you haven't done much raiding by level 80 you're going to
need to start amping up your hunter's gear before you start running
those Naxx raids. The good news is you have a wide assortment of places
you can start gathering gear from to aid you in those long nights out
with the guild. Reputation grinding, dungeon crawling and even crafting
can play a big part in converting your hunter from solo/group ready to
raid ready.

One of the first things you need to do as a hunter before
embarking on those raids is to boost up your stats. Your hit rating is
one of the most important things you can increase at this stage. Some
people put more emphasis on boosting haste and while that is important,
firing all the shots in the world at light speed is pretty useless if
they all miss. So work on getting your hit rating capped. There are a
number of ways to do this. You can get gear with hit increasing stats,
use gems that add to hit rating, or you can even buy food that will
offer you a temporary hit rating boost if you need it. Although I
recommend getting a more permanent hit rating solution as food of this
sort can come at an expensive price if you can't make it yourself.

The Polished
Regimental Hauberk is one of the better chest pieces you can find for
pre-raid gear.

Reputation Gear

You may or may not have read my recent guide on Northrend reputation gear, but if you didn't
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65670" target="_blank">give
it a look over as some of this next section will involve some
of the items acquired through these reputation vendors.

Reputation vendors can provide some useful stuff to help get
you started in the raid department. Once you get into those raid
dungeons you'll find a lot better stuff than most things you'll find
elsewhere, but for now the goal is to get you geared up to a decent level to
help out your fellow guild mates by being a valuable source of damage.
Much like dungeon crawling, earning reputation gear is a time consuming
process. You'll need to get your faction up high enough to actually be
able to buy and use the items you want and that can take a good amount
of time devotion since there are things you can use from several different
factions.

The Argent Crusade has three pieces that
can be used as intro raid gear. The Zombie Sweeper Shotgun provides a nice dps weapon with the added bonus of boosting your hit
rating by 14 points. The Polished Regimental Hauberk is one of the
better non-raid chest pieces you can find for the hunter and will
probably last you through more than a few raids before you find
something to replace it with. Lastly, you have the Cloak of Holy
Extermination. While not the best cloak you can get at this point, it
does provide some useful stats and can be useful in filling the slot
until you find something better. You'll need to get your reputation up
to exalted in order to purchase the hauberk as it has the highest
requirement on the list, but it's well worth it.

The Knights of the Ebon Blade will give you a few more options
to use for raiding. The Reaper of the Dark Souls sword is useful to
keep in your melee weapon slot as it adds 33 to your hit rating. The
damage and speed really doesn't matter as you're never going to swing
this thing even once if you're raiding. If you do the whole raid is probably
going to come to a complete stop. Your guildees, your guildees pets,
and the mobs are all going to stop and just look at you, and you are
going to suddenly feel really stupid. Don't be that guy! The Spaulders of the Black Arrow works well as a shoulder
piece until a more permanent piece is acquired, but you can find a few better options in some of the
heroic dungeons. The Arcanum of
Torment enchantment can be useful for boosting critical strike and
attack power on a head slot item and is a useful enchantment for the hunter.

Use: Permanently adds 50 attack
power and 20 critical strike rating to a head slot item. Does not stack
with other enchantments for the selected equipment slot.

The Sons of Hodir can provide a few more items to consider. The Broken Stalactite dagger can be used to fill one of your melee slots for
additional hit rating points. Just don't hit anything with it on a raid
or your friends and guildees will point and laugh at you.The Giant Ring
Belt can be a useful tool until you find better as it provides a fair
boost in stats and the Greater Inscription of the Axe enchantment can
be a nice boost for the hunter on a shoulder item.

Use: Permanently
adds 40 attack power and 15 critical strike rating to a shoulder slot
item. Does not stack with other enchantments for the selected equipment
slot.

The Frenzyheart tribe can offer one useful item in the form of
a trinket. The stats may not sound like a lot, but it can be useful in
some situations where you face a raid boss with adds. Drop one of those
and gain yourself a momentary increase in damage. There are certainly
better things out there, but we're just worried about getting you ready
to tackle the stuff that gives it.

Equip: Upon killing a creature that
grants you experience, you grow furious, dealing significantly more
damage for the next 10 seconds.

Dungeon Crawling Gear

You can find a great assortment of items running heroic dungeons.
However, these do take time and you may have to run the dungeons a
lot of times to get what you're looking for. This is probably
going to be one of your best bets for getting up some decent gear to prime
yourself for raiding. I have listed several items below and where you
can find them. Some are better than others and the reason I included
more was to give you a variety to choose from. There's nothing worse
than getting pigeon holed looking for one piece of gear that doesn't
drop after a month of running heroics. It does tend to happen at times and having an alternate piece can sometimes help out until you get what you want or need.

There are several dungeons you can go treasure hunting in. Some are more hunter friendly than others, but make yourself a loot table of things you want to get that go along with your spec and try to start gathering. Having a backup wish list is always useful in the event some item just refuses to drop.

Equip: Your melee and ranged attacks
have a chance to increase your haste rating by 444 for 10 sec.

Emblems of Heroism and Valor

While you're tearing your way through heroic dungeons make sure you pick up any emblems lying around on the bosses you take out. These can be used to purchase another form of gear from merchants in Dalaran. These merchants carry some decent quality gear than can be a good substitute for some of the other stuff I have mentioned in this guide. They will take a large number of emblems to get, but if you have luck with gear dropping like I do you'll probably get the emblems quicker.

Crafting Items

Crafting has some useful items to get your raiding
endeavors started. The Nessingwary 4000 is a great ranged
weapon if you haven't had a lot of luck in the dungeons. It also comes
with a yellow socket to stuff some sort of dps enhancing goody into.
There are various assortments of crafted goods you can take on that
will serve as good place holders until you start getting that raid loot
you always wanted.

Gems can help add a little extra kick to your hunter, but there are a
few different options you can roll with. One thing that remains
constant, regardless of your spec, is to get the hit cap to max. If you
need to use gems to make that happen then do it. If you already have
peaked your hit cap then use these slots to add in some additional
damage enhancing goodies.

Use this
to minimize the gem slots needed to reach your hit cap. It can be hard
to get your hands on the materials for these and to find a gem cutter
for a reasonable price, but if you can these make things a bit easier
in the socket department as they help cap you faster and you can use
left over slots for dps gems.

Glyphs offer a nice perk to the hunters abilities. The three hunter trees can put pretty much the same glyphs with only a minor difference or two between them. Each one can utilize most of the same all be it with slightly different results.

Beast Mastery hunters will want to focus on bringing down the Bestial
Wrath cooldown timer and increasing the damage of Steady
Shot. For that, there are two valuable glyphs to choose.

This is a must have glyph for Beast Masters. Chances are
if you invested that point into Bestial Wrath you
more than likely sprung one more for The Beast Within.
Anything you can do to bring down the Bestial Wrath timer is only going to help you put out more dps.

Increases the haste bonus of the ImprovedAspect of the Hawk effect by an additional
6%.

Here is where you will have to make a decision. Do you
want the combination of the Glyph of Serpent Sting and Glyph of Steady Shot or do you want that
extra 6% haste bonus? If you choose the haste I recommend dropping the Glyph
of Serpent Sting. I view the other two as invaluable.

Marksman will focus on glyphs that will support their ranged
attacks. Ironically these are largely the same as the Beast Mastery ones.

Increases the duration of your Serpent Sting by 6 seconds. This glyph can be useful in combination with the Glyph
of Steady Shot.

This glyph is useful for the Marksman as well but for a
different reason. This glyph works well with Serpent Sting and the top
tier skill of the Marksman tree called the Chimera Shot. The
combination gives a nice little kick to an unfortunate enemy.

Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when the target is afflicted with Serpent Sting.
This description says it all.

It goes without saying that this serves the same use
here as it does with the Beast Mastery tree. However, you can see some
nasty combinations in here when you use the Serpent Sting and Steady
Shot glyphs and throw in a Chimera Shot for good measure.

This glyph can be useful if you
have more than one hunter in the raid. Otherwise you might want to fill
the slot with something more useful. If you find multiple hunters in
the raid then socket this use this and watch them love you.

Increases the damage dealt by Steady Shot by 10% when the target is afflicted with Serpent Sting.
This description says it all.

If you haven't guessed already your not getting away
from using Steady Shot just because you became a Survival hunter. This
is still going to be a key element to your attack rotation and this
glyph will always help give it a bit more kick.

Reduces the pushback suffered
from damaging attacks while casting Revive Pet by 100%.

Enchantments

As a hunter, you will want to make sure you get some useful
enchantments to go with all your gear. They add some nice perks and can
give you a good boost in dps. Here is a list of some of the
enchantments you should consider as a hunter.

All these enchantments can get pretty expensive if you keep
switching gear often so if you have a really good friend who happens to
be capable of enchanting or creating the enchantment you can come out a
great deal cheaper. Chances are if your guild is about to start raiding
you have one.

Consumables

When it comes to raiding you'll find that you need to have a hefty
supply of consumables on hand to give yourself a little extra edge when
going into those more difficult encounters. Luckily, there is an
assortment of goods available for just such a purpose.

Food/Drink

You have a few options for food and drink to choose from and the best
way to pick what you need to buy is to see what you need the most. If
you are a little short on hit rating for example, you can buy the
Snapper Extreme food to give yourself a +40 hit rating and +40 Stamina
boost for an hour. Choose carefully though as this food is quite
expensive if you can't make it yourself. Below I have included a short
list of food and drink you might find useful when you start raiding.

Set out a great feast that will feed your party!
Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least
10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 80 Attack Power, 46
Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1 hour.

Become the life of the guild party by bringing this
useful meal along.

Restores
15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you
will become well fed and gain 40 Haste Rating and 40 Stamina for 1 hour.

Flask and Elixir

There are several flasks and elixirs that can add a little extra pain
to your attacks. Again, the thing you need to keep in mind when buying
these is what will benefit you or your raid the most. Perhaps you need
a bit more hit to cap out in which case you can use the Elixir of
Accuracy. If your hit rating is ok then you might choose to go with the
Flask of Endless Rage for an attack power boost. Keep these things in
mind when making your decision. There's no need to be redundant and use
a hit rating elixir when you're already capped.

As a rule of thumb one of the first things you want to do
before you start raiding is to get your hit rating to the cap or
as close as you possibly can. This is the main thing to work on before
you start raiding. As for Agility, most people try to have at least 700-800 to begin preferably more. You can work up from there. The more your agility the better your damage. Once you're hit is capped you can work on boosting your armor penetration or critical strike rating. Just make sure hit gets capped first. I say again, you can fire volley after volley, but it does no good if all you get is air.

You'll find that there are more items out there that can help make you better prepared for raids, but what I have given you here should get you started on gearing yourself up to tackle some of the harder encounters to come. Enjoy the higher end dungeons once you get there and remember to keep that dagger sheathed. They will laugh at you I promise.

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About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.